Sometime in the summer of 1980, Ben Curtis was onboard Merlin with his school friend James and James' father.  Merlin, a somewhat decrepit pre-war motorboat, leaving Cowes harbour, heading north towards the Fawley Chimney, ahead, a Fairey Huntsman 31 produced a cloud of diesel soot and roared off at great speed towards Hamble, the rest is history.

 

Starting in 2001 with a Huntress, then a Huntsman 28, then a Huntsman 31, then a Bulldog, a Duckling, a Gosling and a Falcon all followed. A time on the committee of the Fairey Owners Club, a few years as commodore, co-founding the Cowes Classic Powerboat rally in 2011 all added to Ben's knowledge of classic powerboats, the owners, the joys and the challenges of owning such a fine craft.

 

A practical hands on approach to ownership led Ben to work in close collaboration with Charles Lawrence on 'Fixing my Faireys', the only book specifically written on the subject of repair and maintenance of Faireys.

 

Over almost two decades, Ben kept extensive notes for his own aide memoir of the people and the boats in this select world, whenever the need arose, when Ben knew of a seller and a potential buyer, he put great effort into aligning the planets and so the brokerage Finding Your Fairey was born, the goal to support brokerage of Fairies and of course, Friends of Fairies, such as Triana, Levi, Souter and so on.  Inevitably of course, there will always be project boats looking for some love, we've got those listed too.

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In fact, while the beating heart of Finding Your Fairey is Ben, there is in fact three of us. All of us are serial Fairey owners, we've all painted the bilges and antifouled the bottom, we all have the Fairey tee shirt and we wear it with pride.

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There are Fairey nerds. And then there is Ben.